The present invention relates to a process of manufacturing a felt, and a felt produced thereby, for the wet end with one or two flaps made of needled batts on each side of the felt, which ends in two rows of loops intended to be connected and locked together for the operation of the felt.
Such a process of manufacturing a wet felt with flap is described in the EP-A-No. 108733 document. According to this process, the two rows of loops of the felt are joined together with a pintle wire, then an upper batt and a lower batt of flexible fibers are needled onto the felt.
In this known process, a flap is made by cutting the needled batt near the seam, and then detaching the part of the batt that covers the seam. By doing so, this flap is damaged because the prior needling process ties the flap to the felt and to the batt located on the other side. By detaching the needled flap, it is partially destroyed. This is even more evident when the batt is made of several superimposed layers and when the flap is part of a layer that is placed on top of other layers, because pulling a needled layer off another layer does significant damage to the portion that is pulled off.
The process according to the invention makes it possible to obtain a flap that covers the area of the seam and is not damaged by needling, characterized in that the rows of loops are connected during needling by removable joining means placed in relation to the flap(s), and the width of which is greater the width of the flap(s).